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Doc. 256.] 451
CUNO’S EXPERIENCE.
of Coimbra to be hung.* "It is not true," said the old
gentleman, "the Bishop has not been hung, or else I should
have known it ; only recently I spoke concerning him with
the one lately deceased, and I rallied the pope on that case."
The young Mr. Lublink hastened at once with what he had
heard into the bookshop of Pieter Meyer, and related it
in the presence of many of us, who had congregated there
before change. Most exclaimed, "It is only too true, for
it is written in all our public papers with all the attendant
circumstances." Mr. Pieter Meyer replied, " I will take a
note of this ; for it will soon appear whether it is true or
not." "Yes," said one of those present, "the old gentleman
is crazed in his head. Besides, he no longer visits the Hague,
where formerly they made so much ado about him, especially
Baron de Breteuil,213 the ambassador of France, who had
formerly been ambassador to the Swedish court, and who
tells everywhere such great things about this eccentric man,
because he is simple enough to believe them himself. But
now Breteuil has to be so much the more ashamed of him:
for it is known that some time ago many current rumours
related that Voltaire was dead ; wherefore also everybody
believed him to be dead. On a certain day, while Sweden
borg was dining at the French Ambassador’s, the old gentle
man appeared quite melancholy; so much so that Baron de
Breteuil asked him to tell him the reason, when he replied,
that he was frightened at the terrible state in which he had
met the late Voltaire in the spiritual world. A few days
afterwards the papers retracted the false news which they
had spread about the decease of the French poet; where
During the reign of Joseph II, from 1750 to 1777, Pombal, his minister,
introduced many wholesome reforms into Portugal, by which the power
of the nobility and the clergy was curtailed. In 1758 an attempt was
made on the life of the King, and this resulted in the abolition of the
order of the Jesuits, and an expulsion of its members for all time from
the country. In 1760 even the Papal nuncio was taken across the border ;
and in 1761 one of the leading Jesuits, Father Malagrida, was executed.
The energy with which Pombal carried out his reforms in Portugal drew
the attention of the whole of Europe to that country; and hence the
interest which was universally felt in the fate of the Bishop of Coimbra,
Coimbra being the university town of Portugal.
29*
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